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p1234 writes "India and the US plan to cooperate in the exploration and use of outer space. India's first mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-1, is scheduled to be launched later this year. This is the culmination of long-term planning on both sides of the Atlantic. Apart from India's moon mission, Nair said a probe of Mars by India was very much on the agenda.'Our scientific community would like to see what new things we can find. It is not just for the sake of sending a probe to Mars. Yes, we have an agenda by 2012, by then we should have a Mars mission.'"

I think the anti-offshoring sentiment is more an anti-corporation movement than an anti-Indian movement. I've seen in detail how corporate lobbyists manipulate the facts to create a "shortage". The bad guys are really the corporate lobbyists who hype free-trade and bribe politicians with campaign donations. We are not a democracy if lobbyists control politicians to such a degree.

I can't help feeling sorry for the poor devils working in unsafe conditions making things for pennies while the corporates sell them for hundreds of dollars. One may say that progress would be unattainable without the cheap help. Yet, decades ago when shipping was more expensive and risky, there was a sustainable local industry, albeit with lower standards and less propensity to sue for every little work injury, as well as lower wages.

No, we are cooperating with the Indians because they are the natural opponents of two of our probable future oppoenents: China and Pakistan. Pakistan is most likely to be the source of an islamic nuclear bomb, and China is on track to become a true superpower to contest the US like Russia did in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
This is Machiavellian geopolitics. Having a friend on the Asian continent will be useful much like having Israel for a friend in the Mid-east.

Stick with the Saudi's, they make a good market for your multi-billion dollar defense deals and keep your dollar high. Unfortunately they don't tend to show off the fireworks for your enemies' buddies to covet and last time they publicly demonstrated the capabilities of American industrial technology, you got a few thousand dead civilians in New York and a recession.

All of whom might not be in such dire straits if it weren't for the US's 'friendship' with Israel in the first place. Those billions upon billions of US dollars spent on building up Israel might have been strategically used to make all of those other countries better places. Interesting you didn't mention Dubai, guess it would kind of contradict your rant.

Sorry, no rant here:-|
Those I listed were all Soviet allies prior to 1967 (when US and Israel strategic alignment started in the shape it is today) and have been (with the exception of Lebanon) military dictatorships for the past 40 years.
Before then, Israel got most of its arms from France and the UK, so I dispute your claim that Israel is the source of all those countries political, economic and social problems. I'd look at the Sykes-Picot treaty, the division of the Ottoman empire and the invention

Maybe he meant a bomb which works by compressing Muslims until they reach critical mass? Do they then split into a Jew and a polytheist and emit a high-energy atheist (which then collides with another Muslim causing a chain reaction)?

Even at the peak of anti-American sentiments after the invasion of Afghanistan, the hard-liner Islamic political parties never got more than 11% of the popular vote.

The Muttahida Majilis-i-Amal and their Islamic brownshirts, Jamaat-e-Islami, control enough arms, ammunition and al-Qaeda/Hizb-ut-Tahrir/Tablighi-whatever-whatever-glorious-Fidayeen-Lashkar-Hizbul support to stage a nationwide coup very soon. Even 11% supporters is enough for a sufficiently fanatic bunch to gain power by force.

Most political parties in Pakistan are moderate, and the nukes are buried deep in the military chain of command, which is secular.

No, large sections of Pakistan army, as well as the ISI (Pakistani secret police) are controlled by generals covertly sympathetic to Islamic fanatics. Pakistan is an Islamist ticking time bomb. Add to that serious grievances raised by Pakistan's Muhajir Urdu and Baluch minorities being discriminated against and systematically marginalized by the Punjabi majority, full blown sectarian conflicts between Sunni and Shia Muslims (the Shilpa-e-Shahaba is not dead), as well as full blown civil war from independence activists in Balochistan and Waziristan (so what really happened to Nawab Akbar Bugti?) , and we have a dangerously volatile situation there.
And not everyone has forgotten 1971 Bangladesh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_atrocities [wikipedia.org] ).

Seriously, I don't think anyone on either side of the Atlantic is considering the possibility of Pakistan's nuclear capabilities falling into the hands of Islamic extremists.

If that is true, then there are a lot of government officials being grossly negligent in their duties. If I were the US president, I'd already have a military strategy for destroying or smuggling out those Pakistani nukes in case their government were replaced with a radical islamic government.

Even at the peak of anti-American sentiments after the invasion of Afghanistan, the hard-liner Islamic political parties never got more than 11% of the popular vote. Most political parties in Pakistan are moderate, and the nukes are buried deep in the military chain of command, which is secular.

11% is more than enough. And we don't know how secular the military chain of command will remain. Given what has happened in the past with the Pakistani nulcear program, this isn't something that I'd rely on.

Pakistan remains firmly in the pocket of the United States. And there's enough inertia from both Pakistan and the United States to make sure that these traditional allies remain that way.

Pakistan isn't firmly in anyone's pocket. And given how shaky (and illegitimate) their government is right now, you're whistling in the dark.

Not trying to troll here, but it would seem that India could use our already sizable knowledge of space exploration, and we can use cheap engineers. I wonder if this has anything to do with the general decline in engineering enrollment at US Universities?

More to the point, enrollment in engineering and scientific curriculae is not exactly down in the U.S.... it's enrollment by American citizens that is down. China and India are packing our schools, especially China. What's going to happen once they've sucked us dry of whatever knowledge they feel they need is another story.

Studies by the Rand institute and other research organizations have shown there is NO "engineer/sci shortage". Thus, it is a corporate myth that the US is not graduating enough. However, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy if offshoring drives down wages in those fields.

I guess the answer to your final question depends on whether we let them stay in the country and work for our economy or deny them H1Bs and send them home to set up outsourcing businesses and improve China's economy.

I have a sweet job at a small biotech startup in Silicon Valley. I was born in Philadelphia and I'm as white as white guys come. So who else works at this company?

The CEO, the CFO, and one of our principal investors are all from Iran. The CTO, the DBA, and my supervisor are from India. (The CTO is writing a tech book for a well-known publisher; I expect it will be reviewed here in a few months.) The principal database curator, the statistician, and three people on the dev team are Chinese nationals. The product manager is from the former Soviet Union; so is one of the UI devs and our street-smart IT guy. The head of tech support is Indian (OK, technically Canadian); she manages an offshore team of scientists in South America who import data into the system all day. We also just hired two additional Indian employees whom I haven't really met yet.

And then there are three white guys including me- AFAIK the only U.S. citizens. Maybe a few others are too (I've never really thought about it). Half of the people where I work came from a company that was originally started by another white guy. He lost faith in the future of the United States a few years ago, sold his business to a Fortune 500 corporation here (which promptly mismanaged it into oblivion), and took something like 10 or 20 million dollars back home to Australia.

I read threads like this one, I watch the news, and I listen to all the bloviating over Iran, over India and China, and it all just seems surreal to me. I wonder what the future holds for this place.

I read threads like this one, I watch the news, and I listen to all the bloviating over Iran, over India and China, and it all just seems surreal to me. I wonder what the future holds for this place.

I have two scenarios.

1. Soft Landing: The British model. Gradual decline from preeminence, rolling back of military commitments globally. Remains a respected power on the American continent, a strong voice among equals on the global stage, no longer considered a super-power in terms of economy, wealth, standard of living, conventional military, retains strategic nukes to no purpose, like dirt-poor descendants of nobility holding on to useless heirlooms from a happier age.

What a load of racist asinine BS. Where do you think all these people are going to end up? In Iran? In China? In India? No. All of them will become US citizens and valuable ones at that.

Who even cares "where they end up"? If we're lucky they'll stick around, but you shouldn't blithely assume people will always want to keep coming here and staying here because the U.S. is so great. I just think it's funny to see everyone bashing India, China, and especially Iran at the same time I'm depending on immigrants f

I propose a different perspective. Have any of you actually thought, that all instances of cooperation of the US with China or India may not necessarily involve the other two countries supplying the "cheap labour". If you RTFA, NASA is actually providing 11 instruments to be on board the moon vehicle. No doubt , it will provide its knowledgebase as well. ISRO and NASA have a long history of co-operation.

Satellites are not launched everyday, moon missions still more infrequently. The usual way to obtain access to space for whatever reasons is often to provide some payload to a party who's going to launch a vehicle anyway. Not too long ago, India launched a military satellite for Israel. What India is providing here, is the excellent satellite launching infrastructure it has due to an active space program. The US space program was always geared towards manned-missions.

Let me end this rant by saying that developments in all fields do not have to reflect the trends in IT (where India does provide a cheap back-office). It's time people got off the idea that the US always provides the money, the knowledge, while other countries are sources of cheap brainless workers. Appreciate the achievements of others.

I guess my response here is that one needs to consider comparative advantage. It makes sense for India to provide the cheaper labor and the US to supply the knowledge. Because that's where the relative strengths of the two countries are at the moment. Frankly, the IT trend is purely economic and it's foolish to ignore economics especially in something as expensive as space launch services.

If India buys some technology and know how from USA, it will help reduce the trade deficit USA has with India. But if NASA sells some of the technology to India, where will it set up the tech support center?

Like the previous deals on nuclear power, this is an attempt to bribe India away from getting too friendly with China and Iran, and buying U.S. arms instead of Russian. Science has nothing to do with it.

Something which makes the US a nicer partner for India is that English is a fairly widely understood language in India, whereas neither Russian nor Mandarin are. Beats me how much of a factor that would be, though.

Something which makes the US a nicer partner for India is that English is a fairly widely understood language in India, whereas neither Russian nor Mandarin are. Beats me how much of a factor that would be, though.

Probably not much of one. There are already more people in China who can speak English than there are in the U.S.

By 2025 China will have more English speakers than the entire rest of the world.

Like the previous deals on nuclear power, this is an attempt to bribe India away from getting too friendly with China and Iran, and buying U.S. arms instead of Russian.

China and India are likely to be very serious rivals, rather than friends. Both have huge populations, and are developing countries trying to break into high-tech. Being right next to each hurts rather than helps.

Iran seems an extremely unlikely partner as well. India is an open democracy, with a far freer society, and are not predominately Muslim. I also don't see much that Iran could offer India to begin with, as India is technologically much further along.

Russia... Maybe... Though India has much stronger economic ties with the English speaking western world than it does with Russia. Are Indian car makers trying to buy the Range Rover and Jaguar brands so that they can sell such branded vehicles to Russia? China? Iran? Not likely.

Iran seems an extremely unlikely partner as well. India is an open democracy, with a far freer society, and are not predominately Muslim. I also don't see much that Iran could offer India to begin with, as India is technologically much further along.

India's greatest strength over Iran is it's liberal education, particularly in colleges and universities. That is why the technocrat generation in India is much larger and better trained than the ones in Iran.
Interestingly, a lot of Iranian students are now interested in pursuing higher education in India, particularly after Ahmadinejad expelled liberal professors from Iranian Universities, and Iranians have a harder time getting into western universities because of political problems. I spent a summer in the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India and there were several Iranian students with very progressive and liberal outlook , unlike the Ayatollahs (they got me hooked on Dariush Mehrjui http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts/iranian_cinema_2595.jsp [opendemocracy.net] films) who were all cursing the Islamic theocracy in Iran.

Iran has gas, India needs gas, and there was a pipeline deal from Iran to India through Pakistan, which pretty muched got nixed because of U.S. pressure.

Russia has historically strong ties with India and still sells it a lot of weaponry. With the rise of a the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an emerging military alliance between Russia, China, various Central Asian countries, and now Iran, India has to choose whether to ally with her neighbors or the U.S. The stakes are pretty high geopolitically.

Russia has historically strong ties with India and still sells it a lot of weaponry. With the rise of a the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an emerging military alliance between Russia, China, various Central Asian countries, and now Iran, India has to choose whether to ally with her neighbors or the U.S. The stakes are pretty high geopolitically.

If you're going to title your post geopolitics 101 you should know that there is no danger of India getting too chummy with China. The two countries have several issues including a long-standing border dispute. India is not going to get chummy with China anytime soon. It's more likely the US wants to build India up to be a stronger foil to China in the region.

Eastern India is very strongly pro China, but the vast majority of India does not really care (though probably considers themselves more western aligned, be it America, UK, or Germany). For India, they need EU AND America. The reason is that China and/or Pakistan is likely to make another play for India. Pakistan will almost certainly fall to the taliban within another 2 years. This is the same group that tore out ancient buddist statues as being against Allah. They will also go after Kashmir in the only wa

If this is Geopolitics 101, you flunk. China and India are rivals not friends, and they aren't going to get in bed with any country that would side with Pakistan if it got taken over by an Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship.

Like the previous deals on nuclear power, this is an attempt to bribe India away from getting too friendly with China and Iran, and buying U.S. arms instead of Russian. Science has nothing to do with it.

I can't beleive that got modded insightful.

I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but, as others have pointed out, there is exactly zero chance of India and China being friendly any time soon. And, secondly, while I understand that it's considered "cool" these days to assign eeeevil motives to all US interac

Like the previous deals on nuclear power, this is an attempt to bribe India away from getting too friendly with China and Iran, and buying U.S. arms instead of Russian. Science has nothing to do with it.

I'm curious: Have you seen the foreign policy documents, or the transcripts of interviews with chief diplomats, that support your claim? Or are you just guessing?

I see several jokes about cheap engineers or bad education, the scariest example of the latter is probably the statement in the summary about 'both sides of the Atlantic'.
It really makes me wonder where India borders the Atlantic...

A likely indication the summary was done with some US-style geography classes:)

If you start in Utah and move east long enough (including crossing the Atlantic) you eventually end up in Nevada. Therefore, Nevada and Utah are on opposite sides of the Atlantic, even though they border each other.

This is a great opportunity for both countries to share the best scientists on both sides. This mission http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/about_chandrayaan.htm [isro.org] is very critical and challenging for Indian scientists. They need every help they can get to pull this. In the past, when US denied supercomputing facilities, Indian went and reinvented the wheel http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2906865.stm [bbc.co.uk] (although the effort was worth it).With relations improving between two countries, it will be foolish and immature not to accomplish.

This effort will NOT face any opposition like the Nuclear deal. The nuclear deal went down the drain because the stupid "left" politicians played the "Indian congress government is surrendering to US" card. They also threatened to withdraw their support which would have collapsed the Congress ruling party http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/wm1688.cfm [heritage.org]. This time, they will make sure this deal is made and take the bragging rights for landing India on the moon. Yes, the Indian politics is screwed up. But they are not fools to let this deal go away.

I have been following this deal for quite some time. I was under the impression that it was still being looked at (though it seemed like the haggling had gone underground). In addition, I did notice the left announced that they had a deal with China to do something similar. What you are suggesting that the US nuke deal truly is dead? If so, will India seriously consider China's deal? China does not have much tech knowhow on building nuclear reactor save what they obtained from USSR and stole from America (o

I'm just going to wait and see if any asshats here can post a thoughtful comment about India's space exploration, maybe admiring their abilities and scholastic achievements... without making any asinine semi-racist comments about Indians stinking of curry, having unintelligible accents, being cheap labor, etc...

Sad to see the types of comments posted here---remuind me of blue collar miners etc...who would talk of "college educated" guys in the same way---because they were scared their way of living is being disrupted.
If you're getting your butt kicked by India and China, learn to innovate---that's what America stands for---I don't hear Bill Gates or Steve Jobs whining like the pathetic folks here.

Seriously though, they can innovate too, and while idealistic speeches like that are all fine and good, it's too much to expect us to overcome powerful economic forces with mere innovation. To really compete, legal and economic realities need to be taken into account. Free trade puts us at a severe disadvantage economically that I don't think mere innovation can overcome.

Let's hope that cooperation in space lends momentum to helping India modernize.India has pursued a positive course in emerging from colonialism in terms of its robust democracy and liberal society (not glossing over internal conflicts, just not enough space to go into it here), and for the most part in its relations with other nations in the world. Sadly, its economic progress has not proceeded along the same lines due to protectionism, corruption, and inability to build up its infrastructure.

Do you have any idea what you talking about, what the value of near-Earth space efforts have been? Billions upon billions in economic returns (hell, weather monitoring alone is worth the price of admission.) Space research is hardly wasted. Could all of us do better at managing our world? Sure. But shutting down space programs isn't the way to do that.

Great, so other countries are arranging their priorities the way the US does. Of course, shit like space exploration is a better investment than dealing with widespread problems ON OUR OWN FCUKING PLANET! Poverty? Disease? War? Pfft, who gives a shit when we can waste billions on exploring space?! *wide, greedy grin*

I see a couple of responses. First, space exploration is an investment in the future. These others are not. They merely fix problems that shouldn't exist.

Second, which one of that list is the most important? Why aren't you advocating that all resources go to fix the most urgent problem first? That is, if war is the worst problem, then forget poverty and disease. Focus on war, right? Such an extreme viewpoint would ignore, of course, that there's tremendous synergy in spreading resources around and worki

So you're saying space can help to alleviate the problems we face on Earth?

Yes, I'm saying exactly that. There's plenty of history to back me up too. When humans have pushed the boundaries of what they can do, that usually has resulted in bettering the human condition in some way.

Give me a break. If we can't deal with the problems on the surface (of the planet, that is), how do you suppose we're going to magically make things in space work?

Humanity has done a lot of "magical" stuff over the millenia. Problems get solved when someone needs that problem to be solved. One thing I didn't mention was that the grandparent's concerns all had solutions already. We know how to end poverty and most communicable diseases. We know how to avoid war

Seriously, you should take a look at my sig (not that I expect such an obnoxious remark as yours to actually get modded up.) I find people like you that see all Americans in the same light, regardless of who they are and what they stand for, to be just as repulsive.

20? My that's different from a few years ago. Has your currency fallen to half its value in comparison to ours in such a short time? Huh. I know you got screwed with Bush and all but damn, some of that rise is our doing.

And do NOT expect a civilized society in India...

I'm sorry for you. Your ignorance is astounding. I apologise if you've experienced the hillbilly backward-ass Bihar or UP but if you're talking anywhere else, dude wtf? Glass houses eh.
All these people, presumably Americans talking about 'bad education' and all, lol

I don't think that this jawahar guy is American ("jawahar"?). His history of racist posts (and the language of his bigotry) against Indians on slashdot seems to indicate that he's a Sinhalese Fundamentalist or worse, a Periyarite-DMK cult member (and his chanting "God and religion are distinct" gave it away, a classic Periyarite doublespeak mantra).